Saturday, May 31, 2008

Con wrap up

Just a quick post here. I wanted to post the commissions I did at the con for any one who was interested. The first one was commissioned by a gentleman who apparently has the world's largest Iron Giant collection. It is pretty impressive. He came up to my booth and said that it didn't seem like I minded drawing robots. I said that that I certainly did not and he asked if I wouldn't mind adding to his collection. I was surprised because I had not quite anticipated this. In truth I had been worried that someone would come along and ask for a Catwoman pinup or something, but as soon as The Iron Giant commission was requested I realized how foolish this was. Of course no one was going to ask for something I couldn't draw because all anyone knows about me is what they see right in front of them. All my commissions were for robots and machines because that was the crowd my work attracted. Besides that the guy who drew Catwoman pinups was sitting in the booth across from me, and he was kept busy all convention.

The Iron Giant pinup can be viewed here.

My other two commissions were from a gentleman who circulated a number of sketch books all over the convention and had artists work on illustrating characters in a story of his own. I designed a space suit for a tiger furry named Earl McClaw and a destroyer ship for one of his friend's universes.

Earl McClaw in space combat gear.

Maybe the best space ship I have drawn to date. I whipped this out in a surprisingly short amount of time and rediscovered why I like tech pens.

More later. Hopefully some sneak peaks and panels, prints, and sketches. My friend was right, this blog is better with pictures.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Motor City in Review

As always I am behind on keeping the blog up to date. I probably should have announced that I would be attending the Motor City Comic Convention before hand, and not after, but I really didn't think to because until the Con the only people who read this space were people who knew me. And then I started selling books to strangers...

The Motor City Comic Convention was a really great experience for me. It was my first con, and my first chance to peddle my book to strangers and get honest feedback and encouragement. It was great to see people take an interest in the art and story, especially when someone would come by the booth and then go take a look at the rest of the con and come back. It let me know that even with everything else that was going on, people still wanted to come back and spend their hard-earned con dollars on my book. That felt pretty good.

It also meant that suddenly there were people who wanted to know how they could keep up to date on the story, and the progress of issue two. What a dilemma. If only, I thought, if only there was an information network that connected people all over the world which I could use to keep those who had bought my book up to date on what was happening. I cursed myself for not making a website, and then realized that I had this blog. Then I cursed myself for not making business cards (which really is shameful since I work at a print shop) and then I got out little pieces of paper and began writing down this web address. So this post goes out to all of you who stopped by my booth and received one of those little pieces of paper.

More details on the con later, including (I hope) pictures of the commissions which I did, but for now, how about some pictures of the booth. Till next time.

This was the booth. A little sparse but for the poster.

Books for sale! And you can almost see one of my commissioned pieces on the table there.

Next to me on the table you can see a sketchbook open to a character for whom I was asked to create a space suit.

I also had the privilege of setting up next to Katie Cook. She has done a fair amount of work on the Star Wars universe over the years and we got to see Darth Vader give her a hug.

Lastly a shot of me working on a spaceship piece on Sunday. More later!